My Audio Addiction

I drive an hour to get to work every day, combine that with my love of books and I have become an audio book listener. Though to be honest I have had the habit for years, even before my long commute to Wellesley. I can and will listen to anything- books I would never try reading- I will listen to on audio. For me it’s not just the convenience of “reading” a book while driving. Audio books are engaging and entertaining, the performance of a good reader brings out the best of a book and can sometimes rescue less-than-stellar writing. One of the few audio books I couldn’t get through was Steven Hawking’s Brief History of Time, read by Michael Jackson (no, not that one). I could not drive and concentrate enough to begin to understand what I heard, so after a lot of rewinding I eventually gave up. I find the only time I can’t listen to a book and drive is when I am trying not to get lost, but once I find my way, the book is back on. I like audio books so much I listen to them when I am not driving. I can listen to a good book while I knit or garden or cook or while taking a walk.

I have been known to honk my horn, when something particularly thrilling happens in my audio book (Blood Red Horse read by Maggie Mash) in the car, I have also sat in my driveway because I’m at an especially good part, or brought it into work with me when I just need to finish the last cd of a book. I sometimes wish I had a button that would speed a reader up, when I just want to know what happens at the end. I have groaned and yelled at narrators/authors while keeping both hands firmly on the wheel. I’ve listened to the wonderful Edward Herrmann read me Geronimo Stilton and Unbroken and loved both.

What else have I liked? Lets start with the obvious, the Harry Potter audios, that Jim Dale is a genius. Overall I prefer a good actor to take on any book. I always thought authors would be a good choice for readers, they obviously know the work, and I thought by listening to them reading I would garner a little more insight into the book. Not so, some authors just aren’t up to the task, and the critic in me thinks, no, why didn’t they fix this? or try to stop them? Some authors just take a little time to get used to. Believe it or not it took some time for me to warm up to. E. B. White. How amazing was it to listen to him read his own work, his books are masterpieces but, his voice is quirky to say the least. I did get used to it and it did make me love Trumpet of the Swan even more. I was amazed at the total lack of inflection or emotion I got from Pat Conroy reading his book My Reading Life, but I liked the book and got used to him by the end. There are plenty I haven’t gotten used to and I have a small list of professional narrators I will not listen to, no matter what the book. Yes I have listened to a lot of books over the years. I keep a little notebook to keep track of things and have a simple 4 star system to rate story and narrator. Here’s a sampling of some of my more memorable audio “reads”.

Lorna’s Hall of Fame Audios (for various and personal reasons) include:

• Eye of the Needle read by Illya Kuryakin aka NCIS’s Ducky aka David McCallum- the guy does great voices male and female

• Harry Potter Series read by Jim Dale- genius

• Walk in the Woods read by Bill Bryson- an author I needed to get used to he is laugh out loud funny

• Moby Dick (abridged) read by Burt Reynolds – need I say more

• Blood Red Horse read by Maggie Mash- see above horn honking

• Nation read by Stephen Briggs- he makes a really good book totally enthralling

• Cricket in Times Square read by Tony Shalhoub- I can’t tell you how talented and sweet he is

• Any version of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Bubbling Under the Hot 100

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy--the 13th edition of Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles (covering the years 1955 to 2010) is due out in June, and a little elf has pre-ordered a copy for me. You don't know who Joel Whitburn is? Really? Do you want to know who he is? Wait--before you have a chance to answer yes or no, I'll tell you.

Joel Whitburn is a 71-year-old music researcher based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Since 1970, he has published around 200 data-crammed books based on the rankings and miscellaneous information in Billboard magazine's Pop, Rock, Country, R&B/Hip-Hop, Adult Contemporary, and Dance/Disco record charts. His books are to popular music in America what the old Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia was to our national pastime before the Internet became the main repository of baseball statistics. Whitburn maintains a website but you have to pay to do searches on it; besides, the books are way more fun to use, in my (admittedly book-revering) opinion.  

I own a copy of the 6th edition of Top Pop Singles, which covers the years 1955 to 1990. My knowledge of pop music pretty much fizzles out somewhere in the early or mid '80s, though I'm not averse to listening to contemporary pop. I just stopped caring about the music enough to want to keep tabs on chart performance. So why do I need the latest edition of Top Pop Singles, you ask. (You did ask; I think I heard you ask. It's not altogether inconceivable that you would have asked.)

OK, my friends, I'll tell you: Because the new edition is going to include never-before-included information on "Breakout Singles," a feature that ran in Billboard from January 9, 1961 to February 10, 1973, a period that, in Whitburn's words, represents "the golden era of garage bands and Top 40 radio." It also happens to very nearly coincide with the 10-year period (1963 to 1972, inclusive) in which much of my favorite music was recorded and released.

The "Breakout Singles" were records that were getting airplay, selling well, and effectively becoming local hits in one or more of 32 major markets (including the usual metropolitan suspects but also less influential markets like Buffalo, Milwaukee, Albany, Hartford, Louisville, Oklahoma City, and Newark). Many eventually made the Billboard "Hot 100" or "Bubbling Under the Hot 100" charts, but in the 12+ years during which the "Breakout Singles" feature existed, precisely 631 of the "Breakout Hits" made neither of those national charts. We're talking about the bands that played at your and my (if you've read this far you're close to me in age) junior-high and high-school dances in the era right after the era in which they called those dances "sock hops." No wonder, then, that a needy nerd like me needs the new edition of Top Pop Singles, even if you don't. 

The other point I want to make, besides the general point about the greatness and coolness of the entire Joel Whitburn Record Research franchise up there in Menomonee Falls, is that I can't imagine Whitburn's books being studied or browsed on an e-reader. From a technical standpoint, you could do that, of course. But why would you want to? I just this second picked up my copy of the 6th edition of Top Pop Singles, opened it to a random page (page 592), and . . . there they are, the British group, the Tremeloes, with a listing of the five songs of theirs that made the U.S. Top 100 from 1964 to 1968, including their fine cover of Cat Stevens's "Here Comes My Baby" (the Tremoloes' version peaked at #13 in 1967), and their equally fine cover of the gorgeous Four Seasons B-side (to "Rag Doll"), "Silence is Golden" (peaked at #11, also in 1967).

But then I let my eyes wander across the two-page spread that includes the Tremoloes, and say, there's Doris Troy, who sang "Just One Look," and the Troggs, who made "Wild Thing" famous before Jimi Hendrix made it even more famous at Monterey Pop, and Pat Travers, who reached #56 in 1979 with his annoyingly testosteronic "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)." Gee, did the Cat Stevens original of "Here Comes My Baby" ever chart in the U.S? I flip back to the Cat Stevens entry on page 554--no, it didn't. Did any other version of the song do so, other than that of the Tremeloes? I flip to the index, page 711--none did.

Ah, but what about the "Bubbling Under the Hot 100" chart? Did any version of "Here Comes My Baby" make it to "Bubbling Under" without subsequently advancing to the "Hot 100"? Let me grab my 1992 edition of Whitburn's Bubbling Under (in recent years, all the "Bubbling" info has been folded into Top Pop Singles, but at one time it constituted a separate book). Holy moly--there's a 1967 Perry Como version of "Here Comes My Baby" that peaked only at #124. Oh wait--it's not the Cat Stevens song, it's a different song with the same title. Not a song I'm familiar with, although Dottie West, who later recorded with Kenny Rogers, apparently had a #10 Country hit with it in 1964. And . . . .

Maybe there'll come a time when the look-what-I-stumbled-on serendipity that we experience when we browse through a hard-copy reference book will be capable of being roughly approximated with e-books and e-readers. Approximated but not replicated. I can't imagine that e-books will ever e-licit quite the same feeling. Not in me. And probably not in you.

--Barry Hoberman

Young film critic

Recently I was having a conversation with one of the young women (20 something) who care for my mother. She was asking me if my seven year old liked Disney movies.  I laughed and told her some of the new one but that his heart really belongs to The Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn, and Cary Grant.

She looked at me and said, "I don't know who any of those people are."

Several years ago I had the good fortune of being introduced to Ty Burr's book, "The Best Old Movies 

For Families"  Burr breaks down classics (some popular and some movie critic classics)  by age and provides helpful information about each film.  Who knew that the sword fighting scenes in "Robin Hood" and the light saber scenes in "Star Wars were pretty much the same?  We started with the films for ages 3+ and now four years later, Christmas this year we enjoyed our son's first Hitchcock film.  

Recently it was pizza & movie night and our son's turn to pick.  He said, "I can't decide between "Bringing Up Baby" or  "North by Northwest or "A Night in Casablanca""  Oh what to do!

All of this does have it's draw backs though, at a Brattle Theatre screening of "The Sea Hawks" last summer, my son was able to recognize that the theatre was using the older version of the screen, and was missing critical scenes.  He pouted through the whole movie.  And when they get the occasional 

movie choice in first grade, seldom is he able to persuade his friends to watch "Night at the Opera"  but he's cool with that.

 

--Mayre

“Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?”

A few months ago, I read an essay by James Collins, who wrote the novel Beginner’s Greek. Collins complains that a couple of years after reading a nonfiction book that he had read attentively and greatly enjoyed (Allen Weinstein’s  Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case), he could recall few specific details from the book—just “an atmosphere and a stray image or two, like memories of trips I took as a child.” Citing anecdotal evidence, he suggests that most readers, though not all, share his problem. That being the case—and let’s assume that it is the case, even if scientific evidence for the claim is nowhere to be found in the essay—Collins asks a very good question: “Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?”

There are many good answers to that question, and Collins offers a bunch of them. But some of the most interesting points in the piece are raised by Tufts University professor Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Wolf assures Collins that even if it’s true that few facts from Perjury seem to be swimming around in his conscious brain, reading it was not a waste of his time. She talks about the act of reading as a process that creates pathways in the brain. “There is a difference between immediate recall of facts and an ability to recall a gestalt of knowledge,” she tells him. “We can’t retrieve the specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James’s, there is a wraith of memory.”

“Gestalt of knowledge” and “wraith of memory” are vague and not entirely satisfying terms. But they’re poetic and evocative, and I think you and I both know what Wolf is getting at.

I bring this up because I’m having a very agreeable “gestalt of knowledge” experience as I read Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt, by Barbara Mertz. Barbara Mertz has written three books as Barbara Mertz, but she has written 19 Egyptological mysteries under the name Elizabeth Peters, 29 thrillers under the name Barbara Michaels, and a total of 70 books in all. She has a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, and although she received her doctorate 59 years ago (she is 83) it’s obvious that she’s kept up with advances in the discipline. Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs, first published in 1964 and revised in 2007, is an outstanding book: tremendously informative, beautifully written, witty, even saucy. Fans of her fiction probably wouldn’t be surprised by any of this, but never having read her fiction, I was very pleasantly surprised. Me of little faith.

Now, I’m not a complete novice when it comes to ancient Egypt. I took a course in ancient Egyptian history in the fall of 1973; the text for the course was Sir Alan Gardiner’s classic Egypt of the Pharaohs, supplemented by an elegantly concise chronological outline put together by the professor, Thomas Lambdin. I loved the course and did well in it, but by the time 3 or 4 years had passed, I remembered very little in the way of details.

Over 37 years have passed since I took Lambdin’s course. In the interim, I’ve probably read a few dozen newspaper and magazine articles having to do with Egyptian archaeology and history, but nothing of significant length or substance. Yet as I read along in Mertz’s book, I’m amazed at how familiar and comfortable it all feels. Many of the place and personal names were definitely tucked way back there in some deep recess of my brain, only to percolate into the domain of active consciousness once I started encountering them in Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs. But I’m having to learn most of the chronology and the fine details of countless academic debates all over again.

That I can recall little from Lambdin’s lectures and almost nothing from Gardiner’s book seems beside the point now. In addition to the in-the-moment enjoyment and intellectual stimulation that I’m getting from reading Barbara Mertz, I’m re-experiencing—in a sense that I find myself hard pressed to put into words even if the feeling is vivid and unmistakable—the enjoyment and intellectual stimulation of following Tom Lambdin’s lectures and reading Egypt of the Pharaohs all those years ago. A surprisingly soothing gestalt of knowledge, I’d call it.

Barry Hoberman

Brush With Fame

Allison Pottern-Hoch, Jeff Kinney & Dennis Lehane

One of the perks of being a bookseller (and an events coordinator to boot) is that I sometimes get invited to book-related events. On Tuesday, April 5th I had the pleasure of joining our friends at Abrams in attending 826 Boston's fundraiser, Night of 1000 Stories. 826 Boston is a non-profit writing and tutoring center for youth, a chapter of a larger organization founded by author Dave Eggers. Amidst literary themed appetizers and typewriter-based flash fiction contests, I met the guest speakers (Jeff Kinney! Dennis Lehane!) who were both charming, funny, and down-to-earth. Some of the students shared their stories and projects and everyone was very supportive and enthusiastic about the great work that 826 Boston does. It was so cool to see so many people turning out in support of writing and books! A big thanks to Jason Wells for the invite!

 

--Allison

Entertaining Book Reviews

Yesterday I read (somewhat belatedly after its appearance) one of the most entertaining book reviews I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across. Part of the reason it was so entertaining was that I instinctively agreed with just about everything the reviewer had to say, even though I hadn’t read any of the four books being reviewed and was therefore in no position to make an informed judgment about any of them (not that I am shy about making uninformed judgments, as my fellow booksellers will gladly tell you). But I found myself agreeing so vigorously with the overall thesis of the essay that I was inclined to accept the reviewer’s opinion of each book purely on faith. (I say “inclined” because I am willing to grant that if I actually read the books, my own opinion might conceivably differ here and there from his.)

The review was by Neil Genzlinger, and it was published some six weeks ago, in the January 30 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Genzlinger reviewed four recently published memoirs, three of which he disliked strongly. I rarely use the clichéd expression “He took no prisoners,” but it really applied in this case. His beef was less with the particular memoirs under consideration than with the general direction that the entire literary genre of autobiography/memoir has undeniably taken in recent years: “There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you could turn relatively ordinary occurrences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment. Anyone who didn’t fit one of those categories was obliged to keep quiet. Unremarkable lives went unremarked on, the way God intended.”

You get the picture. It’s a pretty harsh review and, in fact, at one point Genzlinger apologizes for being so harsh. But there’s a method to his corrosiveness. He isn’t trying to discredit the whole idea of writing about one’s difficult childhood, or about a specific personal tragedy, or about a person in one’s family who lives or lived with a serious illness or disability. What bothers Genzlinger is that, in his view, many (not all, of course) published memoirs that revolve around these and similar subjects turn out to be trite, boring, mawkish, or worse. How is this possible? It’s possible—and this is my observation, not Genzlinger’s, although I can’t imagine he’d disagree—because memoirs are an enormously popular genre and publishers like to make profits, as do bookstores.

Sure, you could dismiss his criticism by saying that if you don’t like memoirs, don’t read ‘em. But the major trade publishers are going to publish a finite number of books in any given year, and for every not-terribly-distinctive or ostentatiously self-pitying memoir that does get published, it may mean that someone’s first-rate piece of work, memoir or not, is not getting published. (No, this isn’t a whiny personal plea on behalf of a “first-rate” manuscript that I keep stuffed in a filing cabinet.)

One of the authors under review, Heather Havrilesky—who couldn’t have been too pleased to read Genzlinger’s unsparing comments about her memoir, Disaster Preparedness—had the courage and grace to respond on the Times website by challenging readers to read a two-chapter excerpt from her book that’s linked to the online version of the review. “See if you agree,” she wrote, “that it’s dull or ‘unrewarding’” (the last term being Genzlinger’s). But she went on to say this: “Genzlinger’s critique certainly isn’t boring. Harsh or not, it’s entertaining (as more criticism should be) and a great conversation starter, so kudos to the author.”

Yes, kudos to the author. He’s hardly the first person to complain about the ridiculous proliferation of undistinguished, marginally interesting, patently nonessential memoirs, but he’s made his case eloquently and passionately, if a bit mercilessly. Kudos, too, to Heather Havrilesky for uncommon grace and civility under heavy reviewer-generated fire. Read Neil Genzlinger’s review here (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/books/review/Genzlinger-t.html?_r=1&ref=neilgenzlinger) and see what you think.

Barry Hoberman

Because of a book...

Because of a book, Iain Banks’ strangely wonderful dreamscape The Bridge, I decided to email the cute boy I had had such an interesting conversation with the night before. We were in college and we had talked about vision and that strange sensation of when you are so focused on one subject, the rest of the world seems to gray out. And lo’ and behold, there was a passage about that right there in The Bridge. What did it mean? Had he read the book as well? Was fate trying to tell me something?

I emailed him, he emailed me back. He hadn’t read the book, but he did like to read. And a dialogue began that tumbled into a relationship that, eight years later, has resulted in a marriage and a room full ofoverflowing bookshelves stacked three books deep.

Isn’t it funny how books cause us to meet the most interesting people? A stranger on the train who you notice is always reading your favorite books or that person who has a library book sticking out of their bag at a party? I am always asking my friends and family “what are you reading?” (or in some cases “listening to” for fans of audio books). And then I write down yet another title to look at when I’m back in the store.

I’m new to this bookselling business—I’ve worked in marketing and publishing for a number of years and have loved books ever since I could put words together, but this is the first time I’ve worked in a bookstore. I’m charged with continuing Alison Morris’s legacy of fantastic children’s events, bringing great authors to the store and to local schools. Big shoes to fill! I’m getting to meet a lot of cool authors and I hope you will too.

An added bonus is that I get to work with and meet such avid and expansive readers like yourselves. I love seeing customer’s choices when they come up to the register. Or the people who wander from section to section, picking out some books from Column A, some from Column B. Children that camp out on the floor with a pile of books. A co-worker who presses a book into my hands and says “You MUST read this.” The piles of galleys and books on my desk/floor/nightstand are growing.

What is even more intriguing is why people read. Some are looking for entertainment, some for facts, some for a good story or good writing or good characters. Is someone choosing short stories because of their brevity or their depth? Or choosing biographies for their truth, their history, or maybe (just a little)for their voyeurism? Genres and bookstore sections try to help us classify what we like to read and why we like to read it, but sometimes we have to figure out the subtitles for ourselves: Picture Books-- Because Sometimes Art Tells a Truer Story than Words or Science Fiction-- Because It Makes Me Think Hard About the Future (and okay, I think space travel and aliens are kind of cool).

Why do I read? Well, it has a lot to do with that sensation described in The Bridge. That curious sense of focus that causes the book world before me to leap from the page in full color while the rest of the world fades to stillness and gray. This makes it very hard to distract me while I’m reading (though I’ve gotten good at responding to my name – years of practice reading books behind my desk at school). I relish being able to turn the rest of the world off for a few moments and live in someone else's for awhile.

What do you like to read and why?

~Allison